Where mobile telephones were perhaps viewed by many as a luxury when first introduced into the marketplace, they are today viewed by our society as very important, convenient, and useful tools. A great number of people now carry their mobile devices with them wherever they go. This popularity of wireless communication has spawned a multitude of new wireless systems, devices, protocols, etc. Consumer demand for advanced wireless functions and capabilities has also fueled a wide range of technological advances in the utility and capabilities of wireless devices. Wireless/mobile devices not only allow voice communication, but also facilitate messaging, multimedia communications, e-mail, Internet browsing, and access to a wide range of wireless applications and services.
In addition, mobile devices today are themselves acting as content providers, whereby content that is resident within the mobile device itself may be posted to the Internet. One particular mobile posting process that has gained considerable popularity is a process that has been coined as “moblogging”. The term “moblog” is a portmanteau of “mobile” and “weblog”, where “weblog” is a Web application that provides periodic posts to a common Web page on the Internet. Thus, mobile devices today may not only access information from Web servers existing on the Internet, but may also themselves host Web server functionality as a content provider for browsers and other clients within the Internet and mobile networks.
Some applications, content, and services that might be available within a mobile device may be of little value, however, until the prospective browsers and clients are made aware of its existence. Thus, mobile devices acting as mobile Web servers create a new paradigm shift, since Web server content previously indexable and accessible on stationary Web servers, is now located within a mobile device. As such, conventional mechanisms employed by search engines, registries, and portals find themselves unable to take anything but the content into account when attempting to provide indexable access to the wireless Web servers. In particular, whereas prior art mobile Web servers may be located by conventional means, other aspects of the mobile Web servers, such as their context and location, are ignored by those conventional means. Thus, valuable information relating to the mobility of the mobile Web servers is not gathered by conventional search means and thus cannot be discovered by the browsing client.
Web servers today are generally stationary and are typically maintained by dedicated professionals. The content that is provided by the Web servers is also generally static and substantially obtained from files existent within a file system or database. Thus, the data/content contained within the stationary Web servers is subject to change at the whim of the professionals that are assigned to manage it. Certainly, the data/content contained within today's stationary Web servers is not configured to be changed, or altered, at the request of the browser or client that is accessing the stationary Web server. That is to say, that the data contained within the stationary Web servers cannot be “personalized” by the requesting entities to the extent that the data being accessed is customized by the stationary Web server administrator according to the needs and desires of the requesting entities. As such, the only information available to the requesting entities, is that information that has been previously made available based on decisions that are totally independent of the needs and desires of the requesting entities.
It can be seen, therefore, that conventional methods that are used to configure and access stationary Web servers, while applicable, are deficient when tasked with the configuration and access of their mobile Web server counterparts. Furthermore, while administrators of stationary Web servers do not necessarily take an active role in generating the stationary Web server's content, administrators of the mobile Web servers are almost always in attendance and thus may take and active role in generating the mobile Web server's content. Thus, a plethora of possibilities begins to unfold for the mobile Web server, when consideration is given to the “personalization” that may be afforded by the mobile Web server administrators, since the requesting entities may play a role in causing the administrators to customize the data/content offered by the mobile Web servers.
Accordingly, there is a need in the mobile communications industry for the administration of mobile Web servers, such that their data and services may be adaptively focused and tailored to the mobile Web server's context, such as its location. A further need exists for a system and methodology that provides enhanced access capability to the mobile Web servers, such that requesting entities may customize their requests based on the context of the mobile Web server. The enhanced access capability may also allow the mobile Web server owner to implement a level of “personalized” access control to the mobile Web server. The present invention fulfills these and other needs, and offers other advantages over the prior art approaches.